Embodiment Live in 2025: Proprioception
My last column acknowledged the Grand Canyon-sized gap between conceptual understanding and the real-life experience of change.
This gap also exists in the embodiment field itself. Emerging insights from science, psychology, philosophy, and somatics can mean that we know more about the concept of embodiment than we do about accessing the body’s organic intelligence in the moments that call for it the most. We can build an impressive cache of movement recipes that overlook the relationship we have with our bodies.
Today, I’d like to move out of the scientific and theoretical realms and offer you prompts for reflection on what cultivating a deep and resonant experience of proprioception might look like.
What Proprioception is + Why It Matters
In its formal definition, proprioception refers to our awareness of movement and of where we are in space.
And yet, that definition doesn’t even hint at the incredible reach of this special sense.
Coming from the Latin roots proprius, meaning “of one’s own,” and capere, “to take or grasp,” proprioception is one of the central ways we come to grasp or know ourselves and relate to the world around us.
[If you’d like to read more about proprioception, check out this article.]
Proprioception is more of a system than it is a sense. In fact, it is our sixth sensory system.
It encompasses several “mini” senses, including:
our awareness of movement
the position of our body and its parts in space
our sense of balance (in tandem with our vestibular system)
our awareness of force, effort, and heaviness
our experience of posture or shape
how we occupy space
the way we navigate the space that surrounds our bodies (and accommodate others in space)
How do all these seemingly disparate elements work in concert? One answer has to do with how the body and the brain communicate about movement and space, and with the other forms of intelligence involved in that communication.
Our Sixth Sense and the Body-Brain Dialogue
Like interoception, proprioception involves a living, breathing dialogue between the body and brain that helps us explore and relate to the world around us, and plays a vital role in our well-being.
To begin this dialogue, a diverse array of sensory neurons gathers information. Some live in your eyes and ears, which play a role in spatial awareness. Others are embedded in your muscles (particularly, your muscle spindles), tendons, skin, joint capsules, and connective tissue.
What about the other side of this spectacular body-brain dialogue?
Deep within multiple regions of the brain lies an impressive series of maps that chart each of our sensory systems and many of our movement systems.
We have neural maps for vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell, movement, and many other abilities. We’re not alone in this: Our winged, furred, feathered, finned, or otherwise embellished animal relatives have them.
Each map specializes in body parts, locations in space, or movements, or in melding these perceptions with other forms of intelligence.
The brain’s first somatosensory (or body sensing) map, S1, is designed so that each of its points corresponds to a specific area on the body’s surface: the face, hands, tongue, legs, feet, and so on. For the most part, the map represents areas that need to contact with one another in close proximity--say, the face and lips, the thumb and fingers.
We also have an array of movement maps distributed throughout many regions of the brain. Perhaps the most foundational of these is the primary motor area, M1. This map corresponds to specific body parts and to the most important or complex movements we make. Here, the face and hands have a greater allotment than areas like the trunk. This is because movements involving the face and hands require greater fine motor control—and because, like reaching for a tool or feeding ourselves, they are central to our survival.
Yet proprioception isn’t just a physical matter; it’s cognitive, emotional, and social too.
Proprioception + Emotional Health
In the research for my book in progress, I’ve reviewed many novel studies that connect proprioceptive deficits with depression.
Take the surprising new science of muscle—the topic of a recent Masterclass I offered. Among other elements, we looked at how muscle, when activated, releases a host of myokines, molecules that communicate with organs, tissues, and cells. Myokines can act locally on muscle tissue itself, on nearby organs, and on more remote systems like the endocrine system. (More on muscle as an endocrine organ in one of my upcoming columns.) Myokines have a direct effect on many body processes, including inflammation, cognition, bone formation, the gut and its functions, and metabolism.
A study conducted in 2021 showed that basal levels of myokines (particularly KYN, IL‐6, and irisin) are associated with impaired quality of life and depressed mood.
Another myokine, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is the main factor in the neurogenesis, growth, and survival of neurons. BDNF helps improve mood, cognition, and learning.
Moving from the level of molecules to movement itself, I’ve written in depth about depression as a movement disorder (and therefore a proprioceptive one).
Consider the following:
A trio of studies found that particular gait patterns (an element of proprioception) were associated with a bias toward depressive memories and dysphoric mood, and that slumped posture primes a bias toward the cognitive recall of negative words.
A group of researchers examined global body movements in depression. They found that the more severe a patient’s depression, the fewer body movements they made.
And in 2022, an innovative study which I outlined here explored the sensorimotor self in depression. The researchers delved into the specifics of movement issues in depression, with implications for what and how we might move. They examined many domains of movement, including muscle tone and posture, gross motor skills, and perceptual-motor skills.
Their data revealed significant differences between people with depression and healthy controls on tasks that assessed muscle tone, posture, and gross motor skills—seen, for example, in the ability to walk backwards down a straight line, jumping tasks, and manual dexterity.
[You can read more about the study, and the link between depression and proprioception, here.]
Finally, as this piece explored, scientists recently discovered a third type of dopamine neuron, D3, which is intimately linked with movement (and thus with proprioception).
These studies show that moving more is important to emotional health. But they also point to the importance of awareness within movement skills themselves, including activities involving muscle building and muscle contraction, dynamic balance, different types of jumping, coordination of arms and legs, walking in rhythm, postural awareness, hand-eye coordination, and manual dexterity.
And as I’ve outlined, novel movement (movement that’s new to us, or new again, or “old” movement with a new twist)is incredibly therapeutic for cognitive, emotional, and even social health.
Losing Proprioception
After one of several hip surgeries, I was rehabbing in the gym when I decided to do a few tiny plyometric jumps on a series of miniature stairs. I bent my knees, swung my arms, and… nothing. I tried again; still nothing. I gave a conscious command to my body, but it could not comply. It was as though that mini jump was “erased” from my brain’s movement repertoire.
To be honest, I’d known deep down that this was an issue. About a year before, I was having a catch with a friend who’d played semi-pro baseball. My hand-eye coordination was on point and my throwing arm, strong and accurate. But every time Adam threw the ball just a few inches too high, the tiny jump I’d made thousands of times before was mysteriously inaccessible, causing the ball to sail over my glove. That part of my brain’s movement map had “gone missing.” In response, I’d simply “medicated” the discomfort by returning the movements that gave me a sense of mastery.
Many of us lose proprioception after an illness, injury, trauma, or major life transition.
And we all lose proprioception as we age, often by imperceptible degrees. This is because we tend not only to move less, but to lose key movements, like my plyometric jumps or like getting up and down off the floor on our own.]
The loss is also due in part to sarcopenia, a loss of muscle mass, muscle strength, and performance that begins in mid-adulthood and accelerates over time. Other elements of proprioception also weaken, such as awareness of limb position, movement, touch, and vibration; these changes exacerbate the risk of falling.
When the sensory receptors in muscle (and with them, our sense of proprioception) are compromised, we “lose” movements that were formerly automatic. This burdens the executive regions of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex, with greater responsibility for routine functions. As this loss progresses, it places growing demands on the brain’s energy, attention, and resources, and is a driver of cognitive decline.
Proprioceptive loss also occurs due to a disruption in the body-to-brain dialogue. This dysfluency occurs as we age, not only in proprioception but in other inner senses like interoception and body agency.
This isn’t just a loss of muscle quality, or of movements we used to do with ease.
It’s also a loss of our bodily self—and therefore our sense of self—and the capacity to explore the world through our bodies.
In my decades of work as a psychologist, yoga teaching, private work, and supervision, I’ve witnessed repeatedly how losing proprioception, even when the loss isn’t visible, affects us not just physically, but emotionally and socially.
Reflection Questions for Personal Proprioception
The following are several nodes of inquiry that you can employ throughout the year as you consider your relationship with movement, space, and proprioception. Feel free to modify and to add your own.
What movements do I notice myself inadvertently skipping? For example, do I bend over to put my socks on instead of lifting a knee to my chest and balancing? Do I find myself holding on to railings going down the stairs, or relying mostly on my vision to keep my balance?
Can I pinpoint movement “ruts?” Am I hooked on the same habitual forms of activity? Is it possible to shake up my activities, or add subtle changes to the ones I love doing?
What happens when I try something new? How do I respond to not being “good” at it? Can I embrace awkwardness?
Do I notice a connection between the frequency or novelty of my movement and my cognition?
How can I pursue athletics, yoga, dance, or my movements of choice while still broadening my proprioceptive experience?
Proprioception in its Social Sense
The emerging field of social proprioception explores the way social factors influence this special sense, and how the experience we have in our bodies affects our social world in return.
Earlier this week, I was in the gym later than usual thanks to a looming book deadline. I immediately noticed a man in my vicinity who was using several machines simultaneously. Noticing his absence at the triceps machine, I began using that—only to feel, mid-set, a presence looming so close behind me that it caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. Before I could finish my set, he tried to stop me. “I’m using that,” he insisted. “I thought you were using that one, that one, and all of those,” I replied, motioning to what he’d assembled halfway across the gym floor. “I’m using those too,” he said, without a touch of regret. Without getting into an argument, I waited for him to finish and walk away. I then replaced his bar with mine, did another set, and then put his bar back on the pulley as a courtesy.
Without speaking about it directly, we were negotiating an integral part of proprioception: peripersonal space, the area that surrounds our bodies and sometimes, others’ bodies too.
Our peripersonal space system involves a collaboration between certain regions of the brain and specialized peripersonal neurons throughout the body that are sensitive to auditory, visual, and touch-related information.
This system functions like a magical array of second skins. Some are small and hug the body, while others expand beyond our reach.
This cloak of second skins is one of our superpowers. Sentient and responsive, it moves in tandem with the motions of the body. It expands and shrinks in response to our actions. When we ride a bike, for instance, it stretches to include the bike. When we drink a cup of coffee, it makes the cup part of its territory. And when we put away the bike or set down the cup of coffee, this intelligent force field shrinks back to its original size.
Our peripersonal space defines our margin of safety. the region we don’t want other people to enter. It is an archetypal, often unconscious mechanism for boundary setting. Not surprisingly, our peripersonal space (the size of our boundary) expands in response to anxiety (and, by extension, trauma of all kinds).
Our sense of peripersonal space is tied to our larger social body. It is shaped by social dynamics, including multiple forms of oppression.
It turns out that women have a much larger peripersonal area (think: safety buffer), particularly with men. In contrast, socially dominant people (in particular, those who are white and male) need less space around their bodies, particularly around one another.
But it’s not just that socially dominant people have a smaller peripersonal space or safety buffer; they are also more likely to invade other people’s space. (If you’ve seen videos of Donald Trump shaking hands with leaders of other countries, you’ll recall the particular way he grabs their hand and pulls them into his peripersonal space.)
Part of cultivating proprioceptive awareness is becoming aware of our social location (forgive the word play here).
This refers not only to the nodes of privilege or marginalization we carry, but to our awareness of how we take up space or yield it.
This element of proprioceptive awareness also calls upon us to become aware of the way that systems of oppression dictate the space that those more marginalized than we are can occupy.
Systems of oppression use an arsenal of tools to restrict movement through our built spaces, including:
redlining (denying financial services to neighborhoods with predominantly BIPOC populations)
architectural racism (the use of community design, planning, and construction to create and maintain racial segregation, and which also extends to environmental injustice)
surveillance (including police surveillance, commerce-related surveillance, digital surveillance, facial recognition software, and AI-related surveillance)
police violence and brutality
community and gun violence
[You can read more about these tools of oppression in this piece.]
At the risk of too much information, there’s another key element of embodiment that I haven’t yet spoken or written about: the body as a lens of perception and the perspective through which we perceive.
At times, our bodies are the primary aperture through which we experience ourselves others, and the world. This is known as the first-person orientation, the one in which our body is the subject of experience.
There’s another node of perception, however, in which the body is the object of perception, in which we’re viewing our direct experience from a third-person perspective. This perspective might seem less “embodied,” but it’s not. It offers a therapeutic distance. This is helpful in certain cases, such as trauma.
It’s also helpful in a social sense. It enables us to view our embodiment (our bodily self) as others might see us. This perspective gives us interpersonal and social insight. It is a critical form of embodied social intelligence.
Reflection Questions for Social Proprioception:
Here are several nodes of inquiry to help prime your social sense of proprioception:
Am I aware of my need for a “buffer zone” around me, and how this peripersonal space zone adjusts for different people in my environment?
Do I notice patterns in the way others negotiate their peripersonal space—or don’t?
Do I try to make myself small in certain situations—or, alternatively, take up more space than is warranted?
Can I cultivate a third-person perspective of myself and through it, understand what it’s like to navigate a space with me in it?
In situations in which my social location is a more dominant one, do I center myself, or am I able to center the needs of others?
How do I respond to someone else asking me for more space? What does that stir up in me? (Here, we can also call upon interoception to help identify sensations and emotions)
Do I take action to educate myself on the way dominant culture restricts the movement and space of people based on the constructs of gender and race? (If not, how can I become more aware of this?)
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At no other time in history has the gap between theoretical and lived embodiment been more apparent and more costly to humanity.
Social forces like racism, patriarchy, climate denial, and other forms of systemic oppression all work through the body. They target the relationship we have with our inner senses, with other people’s bodies, other people’s embodiment (which in turn affects us), and with the natural world around us.
These social forces profit when we’re disembodied—when we fail to inhabit our inner senses.
We live in a time when dominant social powers are challenging body rights all over the world, including in democratic countries. Some of those body rights pertain to the ability to move, unfettered, through space.
We see this in the way the current climate crisis disproportionally affects poorer countries. We see it in the way climate denial is making climate refugees of so many of us (literally, an erasure of whole communities’ use of space).
We see it in Palestine and the West Bank, where Israel’s actions have relocated civilian communities to new areas over and over again, only to target them with drones—which are, quite literally, surveillance mechanisms that invade community spaces and claim the lives of tens of thousands of people.
We see this in the Congo, where escalating violence forced over one million people to flee their homes and spaces in only a three-month period in 2024. (And in Tigray and so many other places.)
We see it in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where violence has displaced nearly 4 million people in the country and nearly 7 million people outside the country. And in Gaza and Ukraine, where military aggression has caused a loss of limbs for millions of civilians.
Becoming aware of the ways in which these social factors affect our proprioception and that of others is an act of resistance.
It helps us take steps to cultivate our personal and social proprioception, and to take the necessary actions heal the spaces within us and all around us.
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A little note from me:
A heartfelt thanks you for supporting this column by subscribing, reading, commenting (because who likes to write in a vacuum?), and offering financial support. These forms of community mean the world to me. You’ve likely noticed the columns coming less frequently lately; that’s because the final, final, super final date for submission of my manuscript is March 20th—just two months away. I’ll be keeping up here to the best of my capacity, and then devoting myself to more offerings in this column from that point forward. If you’ve got the energy, send a little my way.
Bo
Sources:
A study conducted in 2021 showed that basal levels of myokines: Mucher, P., Batmyagmar, D., Perkmann, T., Repl, M., Radakovics, A., Ponocny-Seliger, E., Lukas, I., Fritzer-Szekeres, M., Lehrner, J., Knogler, T., Tscholakoff, D., Fondi, M., Wagner, O. F., Winker, R., & Haslacher, H. (2021). Basal myokine levels are associated with quality of life and depressed mood in older adults. Psychophysiology, 58(5), e13799. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13799
And another myokine, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF): Murawska-Ciałowicz, E., Wiatr, M., Ciałowicz, M., Gomes de Assis, G., Borowicz, W., Rocha-Rodrigues, S., Paprocka-Borowicz, M., & Marques, A. (2021). BDNF Impact on Biological Markers of Depression-Role of Physical Exercise and Training. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(14), 7553. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147553
Particular gait patterns were associated with a bias toward depressive: Adolph, D., Tschacher, W., Niemeyer, H., & Michalak, J. (2021). Gait Patterns and Mood in Everyday Life: A Comparison Between Depressed Patients and Non-depressed Controls. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 45(6), 1128-1140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-021-10215-7. See also: Michalak, J., Troje, N. F., Fischer, J., Vollmar, P., Heidenreich, T., & Schulte, D. (2009) Embodiment of sadness and depression—Gait patterns associated with dysphoric mood. Psychosomatic Medicine, 71(5), 580–587. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0b013e3181a2515c
Slumped posture primes cognitive recall of negative words: Michalak, J., Mischnat, J., & Teismann, T. (2014). Sitting Posture Makes a Difference—Embodiment Effects on Depressive Memory Bias. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 21(6), 519–524. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.1890
Recently, a group of researchers examined global body movements in depression: Sandmeir, A., Schoenherr, D., Altmann, U., Nikendei, C., Schauenburg, H., & Dinger, U. (2021). Depression Severity Is Related to Less Gross Body Movement: A Motion Energy Analysis. Psychopathology, 54(2), 106–112. https://doi.org/10.1159/000512959